


Snow

by certs_up



Category: Tiger & Bunny
Genre: Gen, Gen Work, Mental Health Issues, Short, With A Twist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-02
Updated: 2015-06-02
Packaged: 2018-04-02 14:21:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4063180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/certs_up/pseuds/certs_up
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In his early days as Lunatic, Yuri has a misadventure. Things could have gone much worse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Snow

It was a night without a moon, a cold night that had left little drifts of snow on the shoulders of Yuri's cape as he stood sentinel atop a Gold Stage building. Here the city offered no direct light; there were only faded shreds of neon from the shops and street lights far below. The snow was wet, very soft and new, and Yuri took advantage of a break in the snowfall to step out of the nook that had half-sheltered him.

This roof, however, hadn't been designed for pedestrian traffic, and the treacherous snow was just deep enough to hide its irregularities. At its very edge the surface grew uneven, and Yuri's feet slid out from under him. There was no purchase for his hand -- just the sudden darkness of an alley, and a good ten stories of nothing beneath.

Yuri was still relatively new to flying and wasn't able to right himself fast enough to blast upward. Instead, the jet of fire from his palms slammed him into a wall nearly eight stories up -- head down. The shock of impact had defied even Lunatic's lightning reflexes, and his body started a tumbling skid toward the pavement.

Yuri was too disoriented to tell how the trajectory of his fall had changed; he only knew that it was sudden, and that in seconds he landed hard, in several inches of snow. He cleared it from the eyes of his mask, gasping. He was once more in dim light. In fact -- he realized, as he quickly got his bearings -- he was on top of a building, not the one he'd fallen from, but the one he'd collided with moments previously. He pushed himself far enough out of the snow to look up, and there stood his father, features indistinguishable in the gloom. Yuri sighed, wondering what sort of lecture he was in for this time, as if the entire experience hadn't been embarrassing enough.

"Well?" he finally snapped, pushing himself to his knees.

The figure remained still and silent, and Yuri looked down at his hands. He could only assume that his subconscious had taken over and given a particularly powerful, and particularly lucky, blast of flame that shot him up and over the edge. And yet he couldn't remember using his power after the impact. In fact, now that he thought of it, the alley and his surroundings had remained very dark as he flew up instead of plummeting down; very dark indeed. Even here on top of the building there was only enough light to reveal the layer of snow, not enough to show whether his father was smiling or--

Yuri gave his head a shake, cutting himself off in mid-thought. It was a hallucination, not something light would reveal and not something darkness would conceal, except as his own brain cells dictated. They were simply making that imagined image fit the circumstances.

He wished he could tell them to make the damned thing vanish, but that never seemed to work.

"Go away," he finally snapped, heaving himself to his feet. "I have work to do."

The shadow faded, and Yuri gave a sigh of relief. That had been an unusually painless encounter, and now the bastard was gone without a--

Yuri's eyes widened beneath the mask as he bent closer to where his father had stood. The snow had ... the snow had ...

The snow had retained the imprints of two broad feet, hard-edged in the midst of a wide, level surface. And as Yuri stared, his breath growing quicker, the snow began to fall again in great wet clumps, blurring the outlines, blurring his sight.

Yuri clenched his fists, shaking with a chill he couldn't blame on the snow.


End file.
